"My job, when I took the oath, was not just to try pleasant, easy cases," Greer, a Florida jurist since 1992, said at an ABA panel on judges whose rulings have stirred a public backlash.

But after recounting the volumes of hate mail and death threats he received, and the round-the-clock police protection he and his wife were given "to the point where we felt rather trapped," Greer said he probably would bow out of a similar case in the future.

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Schiavo, brain-damaged and comatose since 1990, died in a hospice in March 2005, five years after Greer first granted her husband's request to remove her feeding tube. The judge's orders withstood numerous legal appeals, an attempted intervention by Florida's governor, and newly passed state and federal laws aimed at keeping Schiavo alive.

At the height of the furor, Greer's security included offshore patrol boats, as well as sheriff's deputies who stopped every car entering the neighborhood.

"I still can't see a strange car come down my street without wondering," said Greer, who was re-elected in 2004 and doesn't plan to run again.

New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto ruled in October that members of a same-sex couple were entitled to the same rights as spouses but did not have a constitutional right to marry. He and several colleagues then got letters at home from a right-wing radio talk show host who had just read their home addresses on the air.

"I wish you good luck in life, however long that lasts, now that people know where to find you," the letter concluded.

"When I signed up to serve, I didn't sign up for this," said Rivera-Soto, who said he was eventually able to follow a fellow judge's advice to "ignore it and move on."

The panel's theme was the inherent tension between judges' accountability to the public and their need to remain independent of politics. That conflict is illustrated most starkly when a controversial ruling triggers a campaign to remove a judge from office.

"Judges, by their positions, have nonmajoritarian duties," said Cruz Reynoso, one of three California Supreme Court justices who were unseated in the 1986 election in a campaign that centered on their numerous votes to overturn death sentences. The other two were Chief Justice Rose Bird, who died in 1999, and Joseph Grodin, who like Reynoso is now a University of California law professor.

Electing judges, the practice in most states, makes it harder for them to defy political majorities in their rulings, even when the Constitution demands it, said Reynoso, who suggested appointments for at least 15 years, or perhaps for life, as in the federal system.

After what she described as unsuccessful attempts to get the protesters to agree on ground rules for their protests, O'Neill issued restraining orders against leaders of Operation Rescue and other groups that were planning to blockade clinics and confront doctors at their homes. When they defied the restrictions, she ordered them jailed for contempt of court.

"That's pretty much when I became the Antichrist," said O'Neill, who received tens of thousands of form letters demanding her resignation, letters from ministers condemning her soul and hate messages that jammed her phones at home and at work. She and her family received 24-hour police protection. Even today, she said, her name appears on the Nuremberg Files, a Web site that lists purported enemies of the anti-abortion cause and calls for them to be tried for crimes against humanity.

At the time of her rulings, O'Neill, a Democrat, was running unopposed for re-election in a state with partisan judicial races. She managed to keep her seat against a Republican write-in candidate, but was narrowly defeated by the same candidate in 1994, when Republicans swept most offices in Texas. The winner, who had never tried a case in court, based his campaign on her abortion decisions, she said.

"It's the most political process in the country," O'Neill said. On a court with judges from different parties, she said, "there is no collegiality."

But Rivera-Soto, whose state is among the few in which judges are appointed by the governor, confirmed by the state Senate and never have to face election, said he saw value in judicial elections.

"I don't think it is all that bad ... in injecting some democracy into our system," said the New Jersey judge. Even personal attacks from those offended by court rulings are part of "what makes our democracy so vibrant," he said.